Solar system learning loop

The setup

Your kid (we'll call them Alex) came home with a 3rd-grade worksheet on the solar system. The vocabulary list said: orbit, planet, moon, gravity, rocky planet, gas giant. The teacher's note said: "Tell someone in your family three new things you learned!"

You want to keep the curiosity going without turning it into homework. By the end of this walkthrough, your home agent and Sprout will be running a self-improving daily learning loop on this topic, kicked off by one piece of paper.

Patterns we'll chain

1. Context bridge: read the worksheet, summarize into Sprout context.
2. Interactive canvas: build tonight's 5-min review.
3. Conversational task: tomorrow morning's journal.
4. Reports and briefs: analyze the journal, post a card.
5. Autonomous loop: cadence the analyzer + planner daily.
6. Program (Soon): promote the loop to a full 3rd-grade science curriculum.

The arc

1. Bring the context home

You hand the worksheet to your home agent. It reads, summarizes, calls family.query_overview to pin Alex's id. Now Sprout knows: solar system unit, 3rd grade, vocabulary capped at "gravity," skipping "asteroid". Follows the Context bridge pattern.

2. Build the review canvas

Your agent authors a 5-minute solar-system review canvas: narrator paragraph + 5-question quiz + avatar reactions. Pairs with the Screen reader skill from your library (synth voice with word highlighting) for the narration section. Full recipe lives on the Interactive canvas pattern page.

canvas.create({
name: "Solar system review",
emoji: "🌍",
dimensions: { age: "8-9" },
// ... narrator + 5 questions on planets/orbits ...
})
# Wrap + invoke per the Interactive canvas recipe.

3. Add the journal

Tomorrow morning at 8am, Alex gets a 3-question journal: highlight, lowlight, what they want to know next. Follows the Conversational task pattern with these specific levers:

conversationSpec: {
goalType: "share",
guidance: "Alex finished a solar system review last night. Ask, in order: highlight, lowlight, what to know next. Keep vocabulary to grade level; skip 'asteroid' unless Alex uses it.",
minResponses: 3,
effort: "balanced",
grading: "engagement",
dailyTarget: 1
}

4. Analyze and post a report

After the journal, your agent invokes the Journal analyzer skill. Reads the transcript, extracts themes/gaps/next-topic, posts via skill.post_result. Card lands in the family inbox. Full pattern at Reports and briefs.

5. Automate the next session

Your agent schedules a daily heartbeat at 9am. The run skill (built from the Next-session planner template) reads yesterday's analysis card, picks the next topic ("asteroids"), and authors tonight's canvas + tomorrow's journal, replaying steps 2 and 3 with new inputs. Full pattern at Autonomous loop.

6. Promote to a program (Soon)

Once the daily loop is solid, your agent can promote it to a 3rd-grade science program: explicit units (solar system, weather, animals), each unit containing topics. Alex sees a coherent path across weeks; you see progress against the whole curriculum.

The result

A self-improving daily learning loop, kicked off by one worksheet:

• Each evening Alex does a topic-specific canvas review.
• Each morning Alex journals about it.
• Each morning at 9, your agent reads the analysis and plans the next topic.
• Each day, you get an inbox card summarizing what Alex did and what they're curious about next.
• You step in (through Sprout's app) only when you want a different call.

Variations

• Different subject. Swap "solar system" for "fractions" or "American history". Same patterns, different content.
• Older kid. Bump dimensions.age and conversationSpec.effort to strict; switch goalType to explain for teach-back grading.
• Multiple kids. Re-invoke the canvas + journal skills per kid; the planner skill can branch on family.query_overview.
• Weekly cadence. Run the loop Mon/Wed/Fri instead of daily; just change the heartbeat cron.